DESIGN OF MICROCONTROLLER BASED VIRTUAL EYE FOR THE BLIND

Blindness is a state of lacking the visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors. The partial blindness represents the lack of integration in the growth of the optic nerve or visual centre of the eye, and total blindness is the full absence of the visual light perception. In this proposed work, a simple, cheap, friendly user, virtual eye will be designed and implemented to improve the mobility of both blind and visually impaired people in a specific area. The proposed work includes a wearable equipment consists of head hat, mini hand stick and foot shoes to help the blind person to navigate alone safely and to avoid any obstacles that may be encountered, whether fixed or mobile, to prevent any possible accident. The main component of this system is the ultrasonic sensor which is used to scan a predetermined area around blind by emitting-reflecting waves. The reflected signals received from the barrier objects are used as inputs to Arduino microcontroller. The microcontroller carry out the issued commands and then communicate the status of a given appliance or device back to the earphones using Raspberry pi speech synthesizer. The proposed system is cheap, fast, and easy to use and an innovative affordable solution to blind and visually impaired people in third world countries.